Maria Knobelsdorf, University of Dortmund, Germany - Didaktik der ...

the highest rate of implementation of the CSTA Level 3A standards.
Calculating an average score from these four curricula gives
us a mean rating of 14/48 (29%).
Figure 5. Overview of results.
Looking at the relative adoption of the 5 strands, it is manifest
that the HTL for Informatics has percentages over 50% regarding
most of the strands except Collaboration (only 13%) and Community,
global and ethical impacts (41%). Oppositely, at the AHS
Collaboration has the highest scores and therefore seems to be
encouraged there much more. On the other hand, at the HTL for
Chemistry and the HLW, the strands Computers and Communications
Devices (CC) and Community, global and ethical impacts
(CG) produced the highest percentages, indicating the very different
focuses of these schools compared to AHS. As a whole, the
results reflect the schools’ top priorities (or profiles) that are
generally associated with them (cf. section 4), i.e. the HTL has a
very strong technical markedness, the AHS a stronger emphasis
on collaborative and social aspects, and the HLW focusses on
communication, international and global aspects.
8. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate to which degree a
subset of CSTA Level 3 standards (i.e. level 3A) is implemented
in a selection of Austrian school curricula, which lead to a clear
and unambiguous result: The incorporation of CSTA standards
into Austrian school curricula is, to a very large degree, unsatisfying.
Even the HTL for informatics, with its special focus on computer
sciences, does not reach more than 57% (27.5/8) adoption
rate. This seems even more disappointing when considering that
only the Level 3A standards were compared to the Austrian curricula
and the more elaborate standards of Level 3B and 3C,
which feature more in-depth competencies, were not taken into
account at all.
However, it has to be considered that the Austrian curricula do
not go into much detail when describing the required competencies
and skills, but use rather abstract terms. This makes it quite
difficult to compare the (English) CSTA standards to the (German)
Austrian curricula since a lot of freedom, in what specifically
to teach, is still present.
Prospective future research in this area could involve a more
exhaustive elaboration of curricula from other school types or
countries. In doing so, it would be necessary to broaden the range
of curricula to be examined in the course of the rating process.
Furthermore, the rating scale/key should be redefined more precisely
in order to assure a more objective scoring. Also, the scoring
should be done by more people to ensure the objectiveness
and reliability of the whole process. Last, but not least, it seems
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somewhat obvious that also the rest of the CSTA standards (1, 2,
3B, 3C) could/should be compared to the respective curricula of
other levels of education. To our regret, it was not possible to
elaborate on these aspects in more detail due to the limited time
and resources under which this paper has been produced.
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